SOURCE: McGillis, Roderick. “Utopian Hopes: Criticism Beyond Itself.” Children's Literature Association Quarterly 9, no. 4 (winter 1984-1985): 184-86.

In the following essay, McGillis offers conservative, radical, and visionary perspectives on The Wind in the Willows.

“Teaching literature is impossible; that is why it is difficult.”

—Northrop Frye

You will remember in the “sort of fore-court” outside Mole's front door in The Wind in the Willows there are a number of brackets carrying “plaster statuary.” Kenneth Grahame identifies three of the plaster statues as Garibaldi, the infant Samuel, and Queen Victoria. None of these three were literary critics, but had they been, each of their critical perspectives would have been quite different from the others'. I feel somewhat in the position of the infant Samuel, if for a moment we can imagine him as a critic called by the voice of theory. The voice called Samuel three times, but three times...